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Overlord Trailer: Bad Robot Gets Twisted With WWII Horror/Thriller

American soldiers uncover terrifying secrets behind enemy lines in the first trailer for producer J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot's WWII horror/thriller, Overlord. Directed by Julius Avery (Son of a Gun) from a script by Billy Ray (Captain Phillips) and Mark L. Smith (The Revenant), Overlord takes place against the backdrop of the real-life Operation Overlord and D-Day, as a group of U.S. paratroopers carry out a mission ahead of the big invasion. Along the way, however, they learn that disturbing and possibly supernatural experiments are being conducted under the cover of a Nazi-occupied village.

It's been reported, but unconfirmed, for some time that Overlord began as an original project, and has since been turned into a Cloverfield movie (like 10 Cloverfield Lane and The Cloverfield Paradox before it). However, when he spoke at Paramount's CinemaCon presentation back in April, Abrams denied that Overlord is a Cloverfield film and said the project is a strange genre-blending movie, all its own. Based on the newly-released trailer for the film, it appears that Abrams was (most definitely) telling the truth when he said that.

As for the Overlord cast, it includes several actors who seem at home in this type of fantastical genre fare. Among the names appearing in the film are Bokeem Woodbine (Spider-Man: Homecoming), Iain De Caestecker (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Pilou Asbæk (Ghost in the Shell), Wyatt Russell (22 Jump Street), Jovan Adepo (The Leftovers), and Jacob Anderson (Game of Thrones). For a sneak peek at the madness that awaits them in Nazi territory, watch the Overlord trailer in the space above.

Like the Overlord teaser shown at CinemaCon, this trailer reveals enough about the movie to get viewers wanting to learn more, but without showing too many of its cards at the same time. Abrams has previously described Overlord as "a crazy movie" and it does appear to be exactly that, judging by the freaky imagery and footage unveiled so far. As it were, the powers that be at Bad Robot think highly enough of the film to have gone ahead and hired Avery to direct another project, in the form of an original superhero movie titled The Heavy.

Of course, as with many Bad Robot productions, there is a risk that the ultimate payoff won't be worth all the buildup, when it comes to Overlord's secrets. Similarly, the general subject of horrifying experiments that real-life Nazis carried out during WWII is a sensitive one, and there is a danger this movie could come across as exploitive in the way it puts a fictional horror/thriller spin on the idea. Here's to hoping neither of those things prove to be the case and Overlord gives Paramount another terrific one-off creepy film to go with this spring's A Quiet Place.